A new Hobbit Production Diary is out! They've recast Legolas!!!

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. A new production diary has surfaced! It's about time! But I'm one to talk... I don't know when I'll have my next set report up, but I got a few more to go before I'm done, that's for sure.

And I may or may not be staying in the Northern Hemisphere in the immediate future, but I can say no more on that.

What I can say is that the new production diary gives you a feel for Stone Street Studios and the fantastic cast and crew of the production.

They also reveal that a new Legolas has been cast. I guess Orlando Bloom just didn't look right in the make up this far removed from Rings. Bummer, but I gotta say I'm kind of excited to see this new person in the role... but I'll let you see it for yourself.

Legolas was in Mirkwood at the time Bilbo and the Dwarves come through. Additionally, his dad, Thranduil, is a character in the book, so it's really not that much of a stretch to sneak him in.
He was presumably at the Battle of Five Armies as well.

Now THAT is a movie I can get behind! Also Richard Taylor is my hero. That guy never ceases to entertain. And that guy showing of the green screen, wasn't he the hobbit picking his ear back in LOTR:TFOTR.

Damn I'm glad Peter is sharing this stuff with us! This was some funny and very exciting stuff! The behind-the-scene tour of the studio and the actors...WOW!!
And I admit seeing some of the beautiful women(production assistants, makeup artist, and etc) with their irish accents were a major turn-on.
My ale was rising. Tis a good morning to wakeup with wood!

what makes the smart asses commenting on them so sure that they CAN watch the video? one person already said that they couldn't on their iPad and personally I can't access video content from work (although personally I wouldn't comment until I could).
Still whatever makes the little people feel superior before they go back to flipping burgers eh!

It's talked about abit in one of the appendixs i believe, they don't really hit their straps until at least 500 years then it's boom all at once.
That's why there's always been friction between the elves and the dwarves, the dwarves look down on the elves once they reach maturation.

We have no idea what surprises Peter Jackson has in store for us. For all we know Legolas is in the beginning or end of the film as the Hobbit is a flashback told from older Bilbo's perspective. Legolas could be in the present.
And if not, who cares it will be great to see the LotR characters again. Bunch of whiny nerds

Yes, they've recast Bilbo, but elves are a different breed. We've seen both Galadriel and Elrond look the same thousands of years ago. Either do what it takes to make Bloom look the part, or remove the appearance altogether. Recasting is stupid.

I sometimes wonder if these quick video credits are for the benefit of teasing the audience or to help keep moral up around the set during the long slog between effort and outcome.
Either way, they are greatly appreciated.

They go to his home and his dad is a major character in the story. He could easily have been there as well. The Hobbit story needs to be expanded for the movies, and it is totally natural to have Legolas involved. I’m less enthusiastic about Evangeline Lily’s invented character, but I will withhold judgement on her until I see the film.
Also, I was only fooled for about a second by the headline before realizing that it must be a clever jape by Ser Jackson.

Tolkien may not have created the character of Legolas until Lord of the Rings, but he was clearly there as a continuity nod to the events of the Hobbit, and the importance of the wood elves in that story. As such, it makes far more sense to include him than to exclude him.

And what's all this about a "flesh factory"? There were no whore houses in the book either! manGoGman officially drops his support of this movie!
Ha-ha, looks like Quint got all you suckers.
Thank'ee kindly PJ for another cool production diary. Looks like making movies is a lot of fun. Work? Waddya mean work?

... in The Hobbit. Heck, there's no Saruman, either, in the book. It's great that, since they have the time, they're adding what's barely mentioned in the book to the movie. Heck, in the book the Battle of Five Armies lasts a couple of paragraphs, would you want it to be just a couple of seconds in the film? Should everything adhere to the book? The Hobbit is my all-time favorite book, and if they want to change or add some things that make it better, I have no problems at all with it. It ain't gonna ruin my childhood. Get over it, already.
Great new Legolas! I love seein' the dwarves' doubles. Hilarious!

... is moronic. I mean REALLY stupid. Borderline retarded. It's the kind of behavior that makes you wish that there should be some kind of drivers license to use a computer with internet-connection. Some way of removing the too-stupid-to-be-allowed-on-the-internet crowd. Commenting on a video without watching it is like reviewing a book without having read it. And using the excuse "the video doesn't work" is like saying "well, the library didn't have the book". Sure, that could happen but then please don't comment on it's content.

or thinking people are idiots for not watching the video before commenting (which can't be done from some machines or while at work)...
The NEWS that was REPORTED in the article summary, is what's being commented on.
Its not like the Muppets romantic comedy trailer fake out where the intent is to fool you and you're supposed to play along... it was a cute quick comedy bit at the end of a 15 minute video... that was then reported as news.
If there's an interview with a writer or director you like, and it takes an hour to listen to, or five minutes to read, reading it or the highlights is preferable. I there's a ton of news coming from a convention like comicon or E3, you can't watch videotaped version of all 5 days of simultaneous panels, and take 225 hours just to get a news update that takes 10 seconds from a recap write up.
People are trusting the recap on this one, rather than the longer, sometimes unwatchable source.
Particularly considering Bloom was supposedly getting a cool million to do a 2 minute cameo, it was incredibly easy to believe a suit would think better and recast him.

I'm guessing we'll get him spitting a line like 'I would never fight alongside a Dwarf!' then we see him kicking ass with Gimli in LOTR. It makes plenty of sense for him to feature here. If not, the question of where he was when all his people were going to war would be on people's minds. It's okay in the book because Tolkien hadn't invented him yet. So even though it was never explicitly stated, it's a fact that Legolas, as the son of Tharanduil, King of the Elves of Mirkwood, was involved in the events of The Hobbit.

Awesome video, awesome joke (you almost had me btw),
I only wish that kid reviewer whose dad is clearly chummy with the AICN inner circle was a practical joke (gone awry) as well as I had initially thought.

Clearly this is a long shoot. Since people kept mentioning how long they'd been there. But Day 5953 is my favorite.
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Looks great, too. I've been purposely ignoring these but I needed to see something positive about these movies. This worked.

I am an old-school Tolkein fan, grew up on the books, and am thrilled to see the Hobbit made into two films. They can't make them and release them soon enough for me.
Jackson's Lord of the Rings films are a tour-de-force. The books will always be most important to me, and there are a few choices Jackson made that I would have differed with, but they're quibbles compared with the final product. For so long it was felt that the books were unfilmable, and Jackson made a Trilogy that did what seemed impossible. He did justice to Tolkien's work, and made a monument of modern filmmaking.
That said, I wonder if The Hobbit films do very well (they certainly should), if Jackson and Company would ever go back to the well again and use The Silmarillion and other Tolkein works as basis for any future films. The completion of the Mythology of Middle-Earth on film could be ever more amazing. There is a lot of epic material in The Silmarillion that would be difficult to make into films, but I am confident that Jackson could fashion the material into something every fan would want to see.

As for the Silmarillion, I've always thought the Tale of Beren and Luthien alone would make an absolutely killer movie. Sauron as the werewolf of Tol Sirion and L&B paying ol Morgoth a visit in Thangorodrim to steal a Silmaril from the Iron Crown. Dang, I gets goosey-bumps just thinking about visualizing that in a movie!
Unfortunately, Tolkien never sold any movie rights to any of his works except for the Hobbit and LotR. Perhaps after Christopher T. has passed, the estate will sell movie rights to the Silmarillion. ANYBODY but Saul Zantz though.